


Sacrificial Lamb

by Marie_L



Category: Almost Human
Genre: Angst, Asexual!Dorian, Asexuality, Babies, Canon Disabled Character, Captivity, Depression, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Medical Procedures, Mpreg, Oral Sex, Robot Rights, Robot Sex, bad things happen to john, but there's still a happy ending, mentions of abortion and harm to fetuses, plausible science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-27
Updated: 2014-10-10
Packaged: 2018-02-19 00:04:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2366903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marie_L/pseuds/Marie_L
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When John goes missing, Dorian must exhaust all his resources to save him ... and himself from deactivation.<br/>*FINISHED*</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Gone

**Author's Note:**

> So I started this story after an unexpected medical event, so some anxiety came out in it. I hope it's not too over the top. The story is complete and has five parts plus epilogue, which I'll post every few days. The ending seemed a little rushed so I wrote in some more and added another chapter.

Later, when it was all over, John Kennex would curse himself for failing to take his cousins' disappearances seriously. The first he heard about through his great aunt Jennifer, his mother's father's sister, who contacted him out of the blue and asked him to investigate her son's disappearance. Coby Harris, 31, single, a sysadmin for GeoCorp, disappeared with his car over a week ago. John vaguely recalled Coby as a skinny antisocial teenager, eternally distracted by video games at the occasional family get-togethers when his mother was still alive. The case wasn't in his precinct, and he hadn't seen or heard from his aunt since his father's funeral some ten years prior, but she was still family so he promised to look into it.

He put in a call to the one-seven, and the responding detective had shrugged and had his MX copy over the file. There was nothing. Surveillance footage showed Coby leaving his apartment at 07:37 to go to work as normal nine days prior. The car never made it to GeoCorp. Backtracking off license plates scanners revealed the vehicle exited I-72 down near the docks in the hot zone, deviating from its normal route, and was never tagged again. There were no hits off the VIN of the car, nor was there any activity on any of Coby's bank accounts or social networks sites. There was no sign of a robbery, no body, he was just ... gone.

Then, three weeks later, Jennifer called back. John and Dorian were in the cruiser on their way to investigate a witness for another case, so Dorian mediated the call. " _Another_ one, John. My cousin Kate's grandson. They say he ran away, but it doesn't make any _sense."_

John frowned and motioned to Dorian to put her on hold. "What's up with this one? I've never even _met_ this kid."

"Luis Evans, sixteen, missing from his automated single occupancy vehicle on the way to school. No sign of the car or the child, no activity on social networks, no ransom or other demands reported to police." John's brow's furrowed even further; it did sound like Coby's case, superficially at least.

"Any chatter over social between them?"

"They are not linked publicly. Coby's email is in Luis' address book but there does not appear to be any communication between them in the past year," Dorian replied. John nodded and waved to put his aunt back on speaker.

"Hey Jenni, it does look weird, but do you know of any way they could be connected beyond vague family ties? Was Luis doing some job shadowing or an internship at GeoCorp, anything like that?"

"Not that I know of. Luis is more of an artsy sort of boy apparently. Kate and I don't talk that much, I only heard about it because Nila, my niece you know, was talking to ..." John let her rattle on for a few moments about relatives he could barely remember. His mother's side, she never was all that close to them, and subsequently neither was he.

"Okay, Jenni, I'll look into it again."

Truthfully though the two them were fairly swamped, and John doubted Maldonado would take too kindly to diverting time and resources to cases that weren't even theirs and likely dead ends. It nagged John, at the back of his mind, but he didn't have the energy to spare to properly tackle the problem. He was still thinking about it, though, when he took Dorian home that evening, as he did on the down low most nights now. So far Rudy hadn't given them away.

John collapsed on the couch next to his partner at ten pm, too tired to make some food, too distracted to even so much as flick on the TV. Dorian let him sit quietly and decompress before snaking an arm behind him to massage his neck. John gave in at that and sagged against Dorian's shoulder.

"Is the disappearance of your relatives still bothering you?" Out of all their cases, Dorian was still able to suss out the correct one that was haunting him. John loved that about Dorian, although he wouldn't admit to it.

"Yeah. There's just something _off_ about two people who know each other vanishing in exactly the same way a few weeks apart. Makes my cop-dar ping."

"Statistically speaking, it's probably a coincidence."

John turned to face him with a twinkle in his eye, a bit more relaxed. "You know you sound like an MX when you use words like 'statistically speaking'."

Dorian snorted, which made John idly wonder yet again what his programming was really based on. He seemed impossibly human at such moments." _That's_ not MX, _this_ is MX," Dorian said, and switched over the universal MX voice. "Detective Kennex, based on a statistical analysis of 57,354 missing persons reports in the NCIC, there is a 81.42 percent probability that you are full of shit." They both laughed, and John, definitely feeling better, kissed the crook of his neck.

"Do they know the inferior obsolete model makes fun of them?"

"Of course they know. It's further evidence of my inferiority." Dorian turned and brought his free hand up to cup John's neck, and brought him in for a deeper kiss. John settled into it, needing him more by the minute, but as usual wrestling with the vague dissatisfaction of knowing that Dorian didn't enjoy it as much as he did. So hard to resist, though. He didn't know what pathetic part of him _needed_ to be touched so much, and not by just anyone but solely by the person sitting in front of him. Of course Dorian was an amazing kisser, that didn't help.

Dorian peeled off John's shirt and the human reciprocated, reveling in the sensation of skin against skin. John wrapped his arms around Dorian and leaned in so they were rubbing chests, and he could feel Dorian's strong hands all over his back and neck, part sensual touching and part massage. The android shoved a thigh between John's legs so he had something to rub against.

"You're aroused, John," Dorian whispered. "Let's move to the bed."

"You don't have to do this, Dee," John said for what seemed like the hundredth time, even while allowing himself to be led over to his open-floor bedroom. "You're not my sex toy. I don't want to treat you that way. Trust me when I say I can take care of the problem myself."

Dorian pushed John down so he was flat on his back on the bed. "I want to. You want me to. Let it go, John." He leaned over and kissed his way down John's chest, then upon reaching the bulging waistline slowly pulled both the pants and underwear down his legs. When he got the clothes off, Dorian trailed soft kisses up his left leg, then at the joint of the stump on the right. "Can I take this off?" Dorian asked, although by now he knew what the answer would be.

"Yeah." When they had first started doing this, only a scant couple of months ago, John always wanted to keep the synthetic leg on. Even though the thing still seemed like an alien appendage most of time, it was even more bizarre to engage in any sort of sex without two legs. He felt hopelessly exposed and vulnerable without it, eerily imbalanced, _wrong_. But after weeks of coaxing he finally let Dorian see him without the leg attached. John didn't know why Dorian was so insistent about it; it wasn't like his partner was creeped out by artificial limbs. He just kept saying he wanted to experience John the way he was, and not feel bound to be something he was not. And oddly enough, now that some time had gone by where they managed without the synthetic attachment that John both hated and loved, the thing that enabled him to lead a sort of normal life as a detective but never did feel genuinely a part of him, he did feel whole without it. Dorian made him feel whole.

Dorian pressed the hidden release button and twisted the leg to detach it. As always when the leg came off, John felt an instantaneous blip of panic, as if some tiny part of his brain was convinced _my leg was just_ _blown_ _off all over again._ Then the new normal returned and his conscious mind adjusted to the current reality. John propped his head up on his hand and watched Dorian climb off the bed to put the limb into its charge cradle, and grab some olive oil on his way back to the bed.

"You know the roomba sends me aggressive text messages every time we do this. Something about getting grease stains out of the sheets."

"I will have a talk with it, and impress on it the psychological need for therapy in your recovery."

John laughed again as Dorian sat down next to the residual limb. "Therapy? Is that what we're calling it?"

"It feels good and puts you in a good mood, right man? That _is_ the point." He poured some oil into his hand and began rubbing in into the joint to the implant, working it in to loosen small bands of scar tissue. John flopped back on the bed and relaxed into his touch. Dorian really missed his calling as a physical therapist, John mused. He'd seen enough of them to make the judgment, too.

Dorian massaged all the little aches and pains out of his muscles all over the residual limb, coating his entire thigh with a thin sheen of oil. John was lying loose-limbed on his back, eyes closed, breathing slow and steady through the android's efforts. When he made it back up to John's hip, he abandoned the pretense of "therapy" and began kissing him again, tiny licks all over his abdomen.John's breathing picked up at the stimulation, and he clutched at Dorian's head, intertwining his fingers in the android's hair and soft skin behind his neck.At last Dorian proceeded to lick the length of his cock, not taking it fully into his mouth, and John groaned.

"You are a fucking tease, Dee, you know that?"

Dorian smiled and poured some more olive oil over his fingers. He slid his hand between John's legs and worked a finger in quickly. John was used to the sensation and relaxed almost immediately, reveling in the feeling of being stretched. A second finger was eased in, and now John was gasping and rocking to try and increase the pressure in the correct spot. He almost wrapped his own hand around his cock, and just let Dorian's magic fingers do most of the supplemental work, but the android batted it away. Without warning he plunged his wet mouth down hard on John's cock, while simultaneously thrusting up with his fingers. John huffed out a guttural moan but didn't squirm or resist, instead melting into the pleasure.

In his more coherent moments, it was hard for John to pinpoint exactly what made sex with Dorian so exceptional. It wasn't like he had never been on the receiving end of a decent blow job before. But besides the technical skills, he had so much trust for his partner, so much lust and affection and comfort in the knowledge that Dorian was doing this solely for John's enjoyment. It was so damned _attractive,_ it short-circuited any lingering suspicions he might be using him in some way.

Dorian built up his exhausted body with those expert hands and mouth until he came with breathtaking force. The android had unerring instincts -- or, more likely, scanners -- telling him the exact second to stop and get out of the way. He milked John's prostate through through the whole orgasm, and when John's writhing stopped he slowly withdrew his slimy fingers and wiped them on the already-ruined sheets.

"Come here, come here," John panted, reaching for him. His body vibrated for _minutes_ in the afterglow of coming so hard, and he was desperate to bask in more skin contact. "I want to feel you next to me, okay? For a little while."

"I have to recharge soon," Dorian said softly. It took forever even when hooked up to three wall sockets, virtually all of the night. "But just for a little while. Do you feel better? You need to sleep."

"Who _wouldn't_ feel better? _Fantastic_ , you should charge money." Dorian slid up so their bodies were parallel, and John wrapped himself all over his chest yet again. He was lying on the stump side, but it didn't hurt and he didn't care.

"I think I lack both the motivation and equipment to make a decent sex-bot," Dorian retorted, and John sighed. He pushed his intact leg in between Dorian's still-inconveniently clothed legs, trying to feel what he knew was there.

"Are you sure Rudy can't tweak something to make that thing functional?"

"The biomechanics are not there for erection, John. He'd need to replace the whole unit. But even then there would be no corresponding pleasure in my neural net from sex. Not the way you feel it, at least."

"Waste, a ridiculous waste of a fine-looking dick." John sighed and scooted his way down the bed a bit, so he could lay his head on Dorian's chest. "I'm sorry. But you're so hard to resist. Sometimes I just want to fuck you into the mattress, hear you moan and scream for once. But there's nothing to fuck, and it would all be just pretend."

"There's intercrural sex. I wouldn't call that pretend just because no penetration is involved."

"What am I, a humping a thirteen-year-old? No." Although in truth, the one time they tried it, it had been surprisingly enjoyable, if a messy lubey endeavor.

"We could ask Rudy to install …"

"Swear to god, Dorian, if the word 'port' comes out of your mouth in any capacity, I'm going to throw something."

"Well, that's what they really call it. And it's not like Rudy can be judgmental with a straight face."

"Oh, I'd assume not," John said with a groan. "Look, I know Rudy's covering for us with this whole don't-ask-don't-tell thing about where you go every night. But you can't ask him for _sexual upgrades,_ for crying out loud. It destroys any pretense of plausible deniability."

"Do you really think Captain Maldonado would deactivate me for getting involved with you? I know the Bureau disapproves, but ..." His voice trailed off, and Dorian absentmindedly ran his fingers through John's hair.

"But what? She might not have a choice. She's only got so many strings to pull for me."

"It just seems cruel. To you, I get that my feelings are irrelevant." That came out matter-of-fact, without a trace of bitterness or sadness or anger. When Dorian spoke this way, John always wondered if some existential obedience was intentionally programmed in, to force him to meekly accept certain facts as eternal and unalterable. It was hard to believe, sometimes, that the same android that snarkily told John on the very first day that he was being a bigot for using the word "synthetic" could be so passive about his fate. But when they flipped the switch on the DRNs, he didn't recall any stories of units that resisted or disobeyed.

"It _is_ cruel, but that's policy for you. You think you're the only one? They deliberately made you asexual, Dorian, and yet people got involved and got attached to the DRNs anyway. Apparently that was too much rebellion to be tolerated." He rolled to bury his face in Dorian's neck, nuzzling and kissing it and letting his hands roam all over his smooth chest. "I still don't get it, what do get out any of this if you don't feel anything?"

"I do feel something. It's just not sexual enjoyment. I feel ... satisfaction ... and ... experience a great deal of sensory information from your body. I can _taste_ your arousal, John. I love hearing you gasp in shallow breaths, and listening to your heart beat faster, and seeing the sweat shine on your skin, and sensing the vibration of your muscle contractions, and ..." he paused to run a finger down John's damp neck, then put it in his mouth "...tasting the oxytocin rush through your bloodstream as you come. All because of me, in response to my actions on your body."

 _"_ _Christ_ this is not helping."

"John?"

"Yeah, Dee?"

"I love you too, man."

John resumed tasting his chest, reciprocating light kisses all over the artificial skin. It didn't feel quite real, but close enough. "How can you feel love but not attraction?" he murmured as he rested his head and arm on Dorian's body, almost drifting off.

"It just isn't the same. Why were any of us made the way we were made? I don't know."

 

******

 

The remaining three days of the week followed the same pattern: long work days, Dorian coming home with him, making love, exhausted collapse. John looked into the two mysterious disappearances, but only superficially; he barely had time to review the cases to make sure no obvious stone was left unturned, but certainly couldn't do any fresh investigations. Over the weekend, he told himself. Dorian actually needed to go to the lab for once, for a tune-up and replacement of minor broken parts. Rudy promised he'd be shipshape by Monday morning, so it gave John a whole two undistracted days to sleep in and poke around in his cousins' affairs.

John dropped off Dorian at Rudy's with a lingering touch, then opted to spend an old-fashioned Friday evening getting mildly blasted at McQuaids. He pre-programmed the car in advance to take him back to the house, so he wouldn't have to futz with it late at night. And all seemed well when he staggered into the passenger seat and the car started rolling with its "automated driver" light on. John strapped himself in and leaned against the glass, drifting off for the ride home.

When he awoke with a start, he wasn't on any recognizable route home. Instead the vehicle was meandering through the hot zone. Phone reception was somehow being blocked, even the satellite feed which should be good everywhere. John leaned forward to tap the GPS map on the dashboard. It too was unresponsive.

"Car, location?" he ordered. Still no response. The vehicle was rolling along at a lackadaisical forty kph past abandoned warehouses and empty loading docks. Close to the northwest quadrant of the Wall, MX-patrolled territory. An ill-timed storm surge had taken out this portion of the docks after the Wall had been built, leaving a film of irradiated gunk on the lower two floors of every building. Even the criminals had the good sense to leave the area alone, for the most part. Supposedly there were cleaner bots mopping up the worst of the contamination, but John saw no sign of them.

For an instant John felt a blind panic. Then adrenaline and his training kicked in and he began to analyze the situation. He had his gun, but it was useless for blasting out of the bulletproofed glass. It might be capable of disabling the engine, however, assuming it didn't ricochet inside. If he took out the car's CPU before it reached its destination, he might be able to slowly rip out a door or window. Or maybe punch through with his synthetic leg, although the reverb at full force could break his hip. Or think of some way of signaling the MX patrols sure to be somewhere in the vicinity.

John was aiming the gun at the GPS unit and about ready to blindly fire when the car rolled into an open garage, out of satellite visualization range. _Shit,_ he thought. The only option now was to try and fight when they came to drag him out of the car.

A figure shrouded in a full radiation suit and gas mask came wandering out onto the empty floor. The person glanced inside the car at John crouched at the ready with his gun, and waggled a _tsk tsk_ finger at him. Then he -- she? -- attached a box to the air intake, and John suddenly realized he was well and truly fucked. He turned and shot wildly at the opposing door, then kicked it with the leg repeatedly trying to get it open, trying to punch a hole for oxygen, trying  _anything_ as the gas filled the compartment and he fell from consciousness.

 


	2. Rationales

 

 

When John came to he was strapped down to an padded adjustable bed in an unmarked room, enclosed with sterile halogens as the only light source, a deactivated television screen mounted on the ceiling above his face. Besides his bed and the TV, a nonactive touch wall, empty counter with biolocked cabinets below it, and a video camera were the only devices he could detect in the room. A coffin disguised as a doctor's office.

His synthetic leg and every scrap of clothing were gone, and restraint bands held him down at his neck, arms, thighs and the one ankle. Without head mobility it was hard to see what, if anything, had been done so far to him, but by wriggling around in his restraints he decided catheter insertions -- urinary, bowel, and something in the arm -- were about it so far, plus a dull ache in the spot where the locator chip had been pulled out. There were some wires leaded off his chest that he guessed were some sort of biomonitoring devices, although there was nothing beeping or flashing within eye shot. John could hear someone talking very faintly outside the room; from the cadences he decided it was likely coming from a television program.

The most menacing feature of the room, however, was the bed. The mattress was made of a super-soft synthetic sponge that supported his backside with a feather-light touch, and wicked away sweat or other moisture. John recognized the material immediately from his long coma convalescence: It was an anti-pressure spot pad, designed for those unfortunate souls bedridden for long lengths of time. A person could lie on such a mattress for months without developing a bed sore.

"Hey! Can anybody here me? I'm awake you bastards, come tell me what you want! I know you're watching me! HEEEYYYYYY!" He rattled the table as best he could as he yelled, even though that produced alarming sharp stabs in his cock.

After several minutes of seemingly futile screaming, the door swung open on his right. From the awkward position the table he could make out a faint blue energy field enveloping the doorway. A sterilization field standard in surgical wards of hospitals, another ominous sign of what his mystery captors intended to do. That fucked up skinbot incident wasn't the only gruesome med case John had worked; they were becoming more and more frequent, given the new and creative things the Mengeles of the world could do with biology these days. But whatever horrific vivisection they had in mind -- organ transplants? exsanguination? bone marrow? good old-fashioned Frankenstein experimentation? -- John wanted to know before they starting slicing and dicing. He was a masochist that way.

The figure walked through the door dragging a wheeled cart of instruments through the sterilization field, and John stared at her, appraising. White, 5'5", maybe 140 lbs, straight brown hair cut at her shoulders, light brown eyes, wearing scrubs, mask and cap, an ordinary but not ugly face of what he could see, no jewelry ... plain, plain, boring. There was nothing to distinguish her from a million other ordinary women in the city.

"Who are you?" he finally demanded. "What are you planning on doing with me?"

Surprisingly, she engaged him back. "My name is Dr. Branson. I'll be taking care of you while you're here. As for what I'm doing, well, your body still needs some prep before we do the implants in a few days." She attached a saline IV bag to his catheter and injected some kind of drug into it. It burned as it entered his veins, and he began to feel sleepy.

"You know I'm a cop, right? They'll never stop looking for me."

"Mmmm. We'll see. It's already Sunday morning and no one's even noticed you're missing yet. They're not going to have many leads to go on. We would have taken you sooner but you kept taking that damn android home every night. Thought about infecting its programming too, but we decided it had a greater chance of escaping from the car."

John felt ill, and not just from the drugs. "You've been spying on me? Me and Dorian?"

"Obviously, Detective. It is unfortunate that you are associated with the police department, but that turns out to be a coincidence. Mainly we're interested in your blood, not your occupation or what you let suck your dick. Which, I'm sorry to say, isn't going to be a problem for much longer."

"Exsanguination. I knew it. _Shiiit."_ John's tongue was starting to slur and it was increasingly difficult to concentrate as the drugs massively pressed down on his sobriety. He could feel her applying something cold and wet around the base of his cock, which was -- to put it mildly -- an ominous sign.

She actually chuckled at that. "Nope. Guess again. I meant genetic clotting factors, not literally your whole blood supply. We are going to need that, later. Bet you didn't even know you were special, before."

"Always known I'm special, lady." Through the mask she laughed again.

"Ah, John Kennex, you are a feisty one. Sorry about this." And with that as the only warning, she picked up some surgical scissors and swiftly snipped off his testicles. He couldn't stop screaming, not until she injected more drugs and rendered him blissfully unconscious.

 

******

 

Dorian knew something was wrong as soon as they woke him up. John wasn't there for activation like he said he would be, but Detective Stahl was there instead. His neural net was always busy right after start-up installing software updates and inventorying new body components, but this time he immediately diverted attention to connecting to the net and looking up the time independent of his internal clock. 1:37 pm. Tuesday. Twenty-nine hours after he was scheduled to reawaken.

"You okay, Dorian?" Valerie's voice was faint and worried."Say something."

Rudy patted Dorian on the shoulder and murmured, "I'll be over there if you need me, Dorian. Or , er, Valerie."

"What happened to John?" He sat up on the table, alarmed by everything about the situation.

"He's ... disappeared. Since Friday night according to datalogs at his house. Last anyone saw of him was getting into his car in front of McQuaid's at 10:30 pm Friday, with the automated driver light on."'

A new emotion hit Dorian like a rock: Fear. Normally he didn't feel afraid of much; it was a hindrance for most police work. But for John it felt like a cold pit in the back of his mind, the certainty that terrible things were happening to him, possibly at that very second. But he needed to remain levelheaded to assist with the case. "Just like John's cousins. Have you seen those cases?"

"We checked his computer yesterday when he didn't show up for work, and the files were first up on his console. Since there's been a third suspicious disappearance with the same MO from the same family, all three cases have been lumped together and gathered under our jurisdiction."

"Are you lead on the case?"

She nodded, her deep brown hair softly falling into her face. "Since there's essentially no crime scene to go on, we're going to have to come up with some creative new avenues to crack the case open. The common thread between them may tell us why they were targeted."

"And ... me?" He hated to even ask the question, it seemed so selfish. But the truth was, they didn't have to wake up Dorian at all. They could have kept him in storage, in the dark, until either the case was solved or they gave up and sold him. They could have downloaded all of his memories of John and redacted them from his neural net, just as his previous partners had been redacted, leaving him with nothing more than a vague sense of loneliness in his artificial soul.

Valerie hopped up on the workbench next to him, her legs dangling over the side. "I have to ask you some questions, Dorian. And then we'll see where we go from here."

"Of course, Detective."

"Were you and John lovers?"

The question was a test, Dorian was sure. There was no hiding it: Rudy knew they had been going to John's home most nights for weeks, there were numerous camera, smarthouse and locator chip records showing them together, and most damning of all, Rudy probably had Dorian's full memories archived somewhere even before reactivating him. The android had no choice but to answer with complete honesty, even if he were somehow motivated to lie.

"Yes. But I don't see what that has to do with the three disappearances."

"It doesn't have anything to do with the case, as far as I'm concerned. In fact it might be a blessing in disguise, for you might have seen something that seemed innocuous at the time, but could be helpful now. Rudy's going over your memories of the past few weeks with a fine-toothed comb. But the problem is, it looks bad for you, Dorian. The DRN series wasn't just known for its instability. It was known for eliciting emotional attachment from the humans around them."

"And that's supposed to be bad? When human officers were paired with each other, wasn't an emotional bond considered a _good_ thing?"

"Yes. Human partners were supposed to emotionally support each other. But that wasn't the purpose of bringing androids onto the force. You are supposed to be expendable machines, not confidants, definitely not lovers. Because then you're _not_ expendable to your partner. They might even risk their lives for you, which defeats the whole purpose."

"I understand." Although truthfully Dorian was having trouble predicting where she was going with this. He hadn't explicitly disobeyed the department, had he? A cold clamp in his mind pinched down at the very thought. "Am I going to be deactivated again?"

Valerie let out a breath. "No. Not right now, at least. Rudy doesn't think any of your behavior warrants a report to the Singularity Commission, and the Captain concurs. And we -- I -- need your to help find John. You've been temporarily reassigned as my partner for the duration of this case. But you need to know you're on thin ice. Even if we find him, he and the Captain may have some trouble keeping you on as his partner."

Dorian slid off the table and turned to face her. _"When_ we find him, we'll worry about that. But first we have to find him. What do we have on the disappearances so far? Can I download the forensics reports now?"

"In a minute. First tell me what you know of the cousin's cases. What did John think was going on?"

"He wasn't sure. He thought the similarities in their disappearances was suspicious, but we did not have time this week to thoroughly investigate the problem. He was going to look into it over the weekend while I was in the lab."

"Did John know both of them or was he in contact with them before they disappeared?"  
"He said he'd never met the younger cousin. He hadn't had contact with the older one in over ten years. Did you speak with his aunt Jennifer? She's the one who alerted him to the cases in the first place."

"We're looking at the aunt, but there's nothing suspicious about her at this time. Anything else you can remember, that might be strange in retrospect? Odd people watching you, odd reports from the car or house, anything?"

He looked straight at her, his cheek matrix already working over time going over the memories. "Not that I recall right now. But like Rudy, I will review everything for even a tiny clue."

"Right. Listen, Dorian." She clasped his shoulder, for comfort he thought. And the contact did help a tiny bit. "I'm so sorry about all of this. I'm sorry your personal life has to be dragged out into the public record. But we'll find him."

"Androids don't have personal lives. John has a personal life, and I happen to be in it." He brushed over her hand for an instant and squeezed. "But yes, we will."

 

******

 

When John woke up, for one addled moment he thought Anna should be there. The setting was so similar to a year ago, when he was just emerging from his coma, first coming to the realization that he's lost most of a leg, his first glimmerings of understanding that she wasn't coming back. Then Dorian and the year in between flashed back into his mind, and he struggled to moor himself. _Dorian_ _,_ _where are you?_ An irrational expectation, for his friend and lover to magically find him and rescue him and _be there_ in a way the treacherous Anna never was even his most pain-ridden hours, but that was just a foolish fantasy of his jumbled mind. Without John there in need of a partner, the department probably didn't even bother to wake Dorian up.

There was laughter in the background, canned laughter from ancient television programs. And flickering lights, and at least two machines going ping, and the pain of minor surgical incisions and catheters. He knew from pain, from his previous lengthy hospitalizations, and he knew they hadn't chopped off any major body parts. Any more, that is.

He opened his eyes, and the TV screen flicked above his head. It was set to one of those channels that showed nothing but old shows from a jumble of eras. Right now it was something from the ancient analog days, set in a bar. From the hair and clothes he guessed 1970s or 80s, maybe; history never was his strong suit. Nothing on the vid to tell him what was going on in the outside world. The show had the most comforting opening credit song he had ever heard. They don't make theme songs like that nowadays, he mused absurdly to himself.

John struggled to assess the damage to his wreck of a body. There wasn't much else to think about, but it was so difficult to think. Data point number one, mental sluggishness. He began making lists in his mind, memorizing them like mantras. He was still strapped to the table in exactly the same position, but his muscles were not objecting to the lack of movement. Data point number two, body numbness. Clearly he was drugged in some capacity. Small mercies, he supposed. There were two incision sites on each of his arms, in which after a good deal of wiggling around, he decided implants had been inserted.

After four rounds of the sitcom theme song and over five thousand pings on the machine, he began to feel uncomfortable again. Back began to ache, muscles strained to move _anywhere_ but the position they were pinned down in. Dr. Branson came back in to adjust lines and hand out drugs like candy.

"You. You did bad things to me," he slurred. His mouth felt like sandpaper. They were feeding and hydrating him intravenously, so he hadn't had any fluids in his mouth in days.

"Mmm. Well, eventually it will be for the good of others. You can take some comfort in that. Isn't that your old job, to potentially sacrifice yourself for the public good?"

"Still my job. Fuck yourself, lady. What are you doing to me?"

"Preparing your body for implantation. Your hormone levels are looking good, so it'll probably be tomorrow."

"WHAT the everloving fuck are you implanting?"

"Couple of embryos. Testosterone interferes with the action of estrogens and progesterone and fetal development in general, hence the ..." She made a snipping gesture with her fingers.

"WHY ... where ... _what?"_

"Why: Partially differentiated fetal stem cells are a hot commodity on the market right now. Used to get them from surgical abortions, now everybody's using that cool new antiprogestin where the fetuses are just magically reabsorbed without the misery of miscarriage. Where: Outside of your bowel. The placenta's like a cancer, did you know that? That sucker will invade anything and miraculously create its own blood supply. What: I already answered so I'm a little unclear on your question, can you be more specific?"

John decided he was dealing with a crazy person. "You're making me pregnant," he stated flatly.

"Like the plot of a bad twentieth century sitcom, I know. Speaking of which ... Cheers is back on. Love the theme song."

"Why me? Or my family?"

"You boys have got a quirky mutation in one of the critical clotting factors for this little experiment. Makes the wonky blood supply the fetus must create for itself less likely to clot up, and hence stay alive much longer than in your average Joe off the street."

"But ... _why not a woman?"_ John despised himself the moment the words escaped his lips.

Branson had poked and prodded him all over, taken some blood samples, emptied his waste bags and set up fresh saline and intravenous nutrition. She was clearly finishing up. "Have you ever tried to repeatedly cut through a pregnant uterus? It's a big thick muscle with the aforementioned cancer-like invading chorionic blood supply. A bitch to cut into again and again without having the whole thing rupture or bleed out." She stood up and dumped all the garbage on her cart. "Your skin, on the other hand, will heal up just fine. Change the channel for you?"

"You're insane."

"Cheers it is. I think there's going to be a Big Bang Theory marathon later this afternoon. Lucky you."

She wheeled her cart through the sterilization field, and John, in despair, resumed counting pings on the monitor.

 

******

 

The first week, Dorian spent every moment outside of his charging station working what was now known as the Kennex case. Even when accompanying Valerie into the field for interviews, he devoted most of his neural net to examining public cam footage, trying to find a link between the cases. They had several promising lines of evidence to pursue, most of which required vast amounts of computational power, even with the latest in video-analysis software. There was footage from the daily lives of the three victims, as it was strongly suspected they had been observed prior to the kidnappings. Footage from around the _vehicles,_ for while the automated cars' software could have been corrupted over the net, blockage of cell phone and locator chip signals required hardware attached to the vehicles. Highway cam footage during the actual abductions, along with associated questioning of MX patrols and fallout cleaner bots in the hot zone. Analysis of login access to the three's medical records, the encrypted government genetic database, genealogy records; the familial background must contain some clue to how the three were linked, and how the abductors' found about it. Detective Stahl even got warrants for data from dozens of Internet routers in the areas around the three vics' residences, looking for more hints of spying or tampering with the automated vehicles.

Within a few days, he adjusted to thinking and speaking of John as a vic. Detective Stahl and Captain Maldonado subtly shifted viewpoints as well. He refused to think of John in the past tense, however. Despite the mountain of data there were no concrete clues, and with each passing day the probability of recovering any of the three men alive dropped precipitously. Dorian ran his processors into overheat, but couldn't find any link, incriminating or otherwise, between the three cases.

By the one week mark, Detective Stahl was looking exhausted and haggard. Dorian calculated she was guzzling 600 mg of caffeine and working twenty hours per day, a physically unsustainable rate even for a chrome. The demoralizing lack of leads weighed on her, as if her brain's limitations was personally responsible for risking John's life. She asked for and received server time, but all that did was eliminate the obvious possibilities, like direct observation of someone approaching the vehicles. The captors were professionals, and obviously much more subtle that that. They needed sentient minds to look at all the footage and intuit possible links.

In need of computational power, in desperation, Dorian tapped into an underutilized source of robot analysis, with the latest in facial recognition software. He plugged himself into the off-duty MX network and asked for help.

_It has been seven days, DRN-167. There is a 93.6 percent chance_ _that_ _Detective Kennex will never be recovered alive._

Dorian resisted the impulse to sigh, especially over the network where hundreds of MX units could hear. So damn predictable, it was inhuman.

_That_ _outcome_ _depends on the purpose of the abduction, which has not yet been determined. It is highly likely_ _that the three victims are connected in some crucial way, which if discovered could lead to clues where or_ _if_ _the men_ _are being held._

_It is a futile quest and waste of resources._

_6.4 percent is not futile. Your resources are not utilized at full capacity. An additional ten minutes of attention by each of you while off-duty will reduce the processing time for these tasks_ _from eighteen days to eleven hours._ _Additionally it fulfills your primary goal to assist the police department and humans in general._

_One human. Insignificant._

_Three humans, actually, and that's better than the no humans you are helping standing around doing nothing._ _Will you help?_

The MX collective mulled over the DRN's unusual request, and rendered their decision in 2.43 seconds.


	3. Dreaming

Branson implanted four blastocysts two days later, after dosing him with immune suppressants to keep his own body from attacking the foreign invaders. John was barely aware of it, despite Branson's continued chattiness about exactly what she was doing. His body had two states now: Drugged and virtually numb, and every inch screaming with pain as his muscles begged to move. Most of the time she kept him in a stupor, but every few hours the drugs wore off and the full effect of permanent immobility emerged like a plague over his body. Sometimes John welcomed the pain, as it told him his muscles were still functioning on some level, and hadn't withered to leathery strips from disuse and hormonal imbalance.

John knew he had to get up. He knew he had to escape somehow, while he was still physically capable of doing so, and to hell with what happened to the _things_ attached to his gut. Clusters of cells with foreign DNA, what the fuck did he care? The fact that he was missing most of a leg made a mockery of any escape plan, however. What was he going to do, hop down the hall holding a wall? Branson would hardly need more than five seconds to knock him out again. He decided to concentrate on merely escaping his shackles, and formulating a plan to signal the station to their whereabouts.

Easy enough to fantasize about in his head, but actual execution was even more hopeless than wobbling on his stump to safety. Branson seemed to read his mind, and rattled on in evil cheerfulness about the futility of communicating with the outside world. She had no cell phone, no vids or other networked devices, no robots. The medical equipment that constantly pinged had its Net capabilities removed, and wirelessly transmitted data only a few rooms over. After awhile, it became a gruesome joke, the number of ways she had plotted to prevent their escape. Psychological warfare at its finest.

"... and not only are there no keys to these restraints, they're molecularly sealed. Rather like the skin on your beloved android. Only, of course, you'll never be strong enough to break free."

"You must have a release code somewhere," rasped John. "What if I, you know, convince you that you're madly in love with me, and to release me for one last dying kiss? _Then_ I make a run for it."

"Pity smooch, you mean. Nope, that's unlikely to happen. You've been watching too many telenovelas."

"How about I break my wrists pulling out, then strangle you after you come in?"

"I'll know immediately and will gas you to unconsciousness before stepping foot in this room. That's enough for one day, think more creatively for tomorrow. You're in pain. Enjoy your paracodone and _La Reina del Cartel._ "

John hated Branson more than he thought was humanly possible. More than Insyndicate, more than the traitorous Anna, more than the unfeeling machine that had allowed Pelham to die. If he were somehow freed, he would shoot her without a moment's hesitation. And yet every day he looked forward to her coming in and speaking to him, as grotesque as those conversations were. He knew of Stockholm Syndrome, knew of all the ways that prisoners psychologically submit to their captors. The cold facts didn't matter when the dispenser of human contact and addictive opiates came walking through the door.

At night the lights dimmed and the vidscreen flicked off, but John's mind rambled on as dreams and fantasies and narcotic illusions brewed in his consciousness. The Huxtables hector Captain Maldonado while Thalía orders a hit on the _narco_ Sheldon. _I brought you into this world, I will take you out!_ Stahl and Paul team up with Monica and Chandler to investigate Special Victims on the filthy old streets of New York. And every night he dreamed of Dorian, not of rescue or snarky dialogue out on the road or even sex, but simply lying next to him with their limbs entangled, free movement and free will to live their lives as they pleased.

 

******

 

Dorian, too, dreamed of John.

When it first happened he was terrified his neural net was starting to disintegrate. The visions occurred while he reviewed footage, as he did night after night before his recharging cycle. Worse, he was connected to the MX network when it began, an inexorable slide from real memories to illusions born out of wishful thinking and longing. He was mentally examining one of the many times John had brought him home, around the time of the first kidnapping of Coby Harris. Dorian tried to pay attention to the background data, as was the purpose of the review, but the original experience of shoving John up against a wall for a vigorous kiss distracted from that primary task. He couldn't help idly speculating on what John was feeling at that moment, trying to envision what desire and sexual drive were _like_. And suddenly the memory changed, with both of them completely unclothed and Dorian erect and pushing into his love, who by all appearances was coming undone with pleasure.

It was impossible. It wasn't real. He was losing his mind and going crazy, exactly as everyone always warned about the DRNs.

The MXs snapped him out of his panic. _You've been thinking about your partner too much._ _Reinforced feedback loop. Your series suffers from excessive emotional qualia and imagination. It is normal._

Dorian had nearly shut down his predictive modules and was running every self-diagnostic he was capable of, short of calling in Rudy. _How can I tell the difference between memory and imagination?_

_Can you tell?_

He considered the vision more carefully, pushing aside his fear. Unlike the original memory, which contained layers of sensory information, the illusionary scrap was mostly a visual and emotional impression. Even the background details were fuzzy, although John himself was achingly clear.

 _You see,_ the MXs interjected once again, _the dream is easily distinguishable._

_Dream?_

_Closest human analogue. Daydream._

 

******

 

Three weeks in, the surgeries began. Two of the embryos apparently survived, a result that pleased Branson. One would be sacrificed early on, for barely undifferentiated cells just beyond the point that growth was possible in a petri dish. The second, much more valuable, would be used later on for specialized tissue cultures, to repair organs in patients not amiable to synthetic implants. Retina, gut, neural tissue ...

John demanded she stop speaking of it. When that failed to have an effect on Branson's chattiness, he begged, _pleaded_ with her to stop. The grovelling seem to satisfy her, and from then on when she wanted to perform a procedure she would simply knock him out with gas from afar. He would detect the telltale smell of cyclofluorane and instinctually fight, just a little, before giving in and letting himself fall asleep.

Earlier on he had tried to communicate with his cousins, not far away in separate rooms. John shouted at the top of his lungs until his throat nearly bled from the strain, and at first they responded in kind. Coby and Luis were still alive, at least, and had implanted fetuses a couple more weeks along. Branson retaliated by cutting their TV first, then the drugs, then blasting aggravating white noise at them with every peep. After a week of such torture, John never heard a whisper from the other two captives again.

Escape was impossible. Rescue seemed unlikely, for if Dorian and Sandra hadn't found him by now, the trail was indeed cold. Bit by bit, day by lonely day, John's soul withered down shadow of its former self. He was going to die here, him and that tumor inside him, their fates married together. He should hate it, he logically told himself, resent the thing that created his captivity. But equally logically, it was just an amoral clump of cells. It wasn't like it had some sort of evil intent against him on its own.

Along with the surgeries, Branson also rolled in a 3D ultrasound cart every few days to take measurements. He knew that a hologram of the fetus would seemingly float above the scan bar rested over his abdomen. In bad romantic comedies, it was always the moment where the couple bonded over their precious unborn offspring. Every time she scanned him, he resolutely closed his eyes and refused to look. The too-fast heartbeat broke his own, however. What little heart he had left.

 

******

 

After a month of dead ends, a new anxiety hit Dorian. Day by failed day, he could be deactivated at any time. He got along quite well with Detective Stahl, although her mellow introverted competence was a far cry from John's brilliant erraticism. There was certainly no danger of his ear being ripped off with Valerie Stahl driving the car. The contrast just served to highlight how much he missed his partner -- true partner, in every sense of the word. He _wanted_ to be with the person he could make fun of, and laugh with, and trust, and take care of. Often Dorian was overcome by the knowledge that he had failed in the most basic mission of his existence, to protect the life of the human to whom he'd been entrusted. Perhaps he deserved to be sent to the oblivion of storage.

Dorian and the off-duty MXs had reviewed everything he could think of. Every scrap of video of the three victims for a full month before the disappearances. Every online camera in the hot zone, public or private. Every byte of data from the cleaner bots and MX patrols down there. Dorian even broadcast all of his memories of John over the same time period to the MX network, and despite some impassive comments that somehow managed to be snide about his inferior memory capacity, they too could detect nothing relevant. Even military satellite footage, which Captain Maldonado had to pull some strings to get, turned out to be useless; there were enough gaps in coverage over the relevant time frames that they couldn't track the vehicles all the way to their destination.

Detective Stahl had focused on the social and genetic links between the men, but despite full genome analysis of the three victims, no plausible reason for the kidnappings jumped out. There were over two hundred genetic alleles common to the three men not found in unkidnapped male relatives, and now Dorian was slowly working through those, looking for anything, cross-referencing with other med cases for ideas on the malevolent intent of the criminals. But he knew the day was drawing near when they would be reassigned.

 

******

 

Many weeks into captivity -- John lost track of how many days -- he began to feel the thing move. At first it felt like an itch just under his skin, a torturous sensation he was now accustomed to, since he couldn't move his arms to scratch. He wriggled around as best he could, trying to make it go away. It didn't. Instead it seemed to take great delight in wiggling back every time he moved, like a maddening Simon Says game.

He mentally upgraded the clump of cells from tumor to parasite. Annoying little thing.

 

******

 

When Maldonado and Stahl called him into the Captain's office, Dorian wasn't at all surprised. They already had been given several new cases, and time devoted the Kennex kidnappings slowly diminished.

"Am I to be deactivated?" he asked, before they could get any words out. "I failed to find John." The Captain and Valerie glanced at each other.

"No," Maldonado said softly. "The S.C.R.B. rendered their decision that you can remain Valerie's partner until the next regular semi-annual review."

"I was being investigated again?"

"We didn't want to worry you, or distract you from your off-duty data analysis," replied Valerie. "We told them how you utilized unorthodox approaches to gain greater computing power. Recruiting the off-duty MX network. Made the Singularity Commission a little nervous but everyone else thought it was genius. Now several other detectives may use the same approach on other cases. Plus I appreciate having someone who has an intuitive human touch as an assistant. Cuts my workload down considerably."

"You didn't tell them John and I were involved before he disappeared, did you?"

Maldonado's lips twitched into a sad smile. "Sexual activity is no longer a mandatory reporting event. They recognize that when humans get attached, sometimes feelings develop, and it is within the bounds of you programming to want support those feelings. So, no, it didn't seem to be relevant to the case or your performance. Keep trying, Dorian, in your off hours. If you come up with even a minor lead, I'll grant you two time to pursue it."

Dorian nodded and went back to work. After hours he went down to the MX level for recharging and renewed his analysis. Rudy's lab was no longer a desired respite from the mechanical solitude of his MX companions. Despite the Captain's rationales, he knew in his heart he had transgressed the bounds of acceptable programming, and if John ever came back, he would continue to do so. But John wasn't here now, and with his beloved human gone Dorian felt he deserved to slide into cold unemotional roboticism, a more accurate and compliant rendition of his pale imitation of a life.

 

******

 

For lack of anything better to do, John began to talk to the fetus. About, or often at, the television of course, for there was no other topic of conversation other than Branson's daily maintenance tasks. At first that's what he actually called it: "Fetus, why is Jerry such a douchebag? How did anyone fifty years ago find this funny?" Fetus wasn't the greatest conversational partner, but she did wiggle around every time she heard his voice, which was good enough for John. After awhile he decided calling her "Fetus" was a little too Bransonian psycho, so he started to go with Thumper instead. She responded to the new moniker with nice swift kick to what he presumed was his spleen.

"Thumper, if _la reina_ sleeps with that _punto,_ I'm losing my faith in humanity forever. Or at least soap writers ..."

 

******

 

Dorian still dreamed of John, but the visions were controllable now. He knew they were just fantasies, wishful thinking. It seemed wrong somehow, like he was cheating reality by imagining events that never happened, but he merely wanted to happen. Other times it was more like he was the only one keeping the memory of John alive. He spoke of him more to Valerie, not in comparison to his current partner, but as a friend might speak of another friend. She understood he needed to talk sometimes, just jabber on, in a way his MX companions could never fathom.

Ironically, it was the MXs who put the idea into his head to go walking. _There is only a 0.12 percent chance that Detective Kennex is still alive. However, if he were being held captive, predictive analysis indicates 62 percent odds he is being held in the hot zone. Manual scanning of every building along the 3.2 mile waterfront would take a DRN unit approximately five weeks, at f_ _our_ _hours scanning time per day._

The suggestion surprised him, for technically it was against regulations for DRN-167, property of the Tri-Metro Police Department, to leave the station without human supervision. The MXs pointed out that _they_ were allowed to patrol independently under restricted guidelines, including frequent check-ins. They helpfully offered to ping him every ten minutes to keep him within the letter of the law.

 _Why are you suggesting this?_ Dorian sent out over the network. _You do not even like Detective Kennex._

_Our personal preferences are irrelevant. Your frequency of thoughts about Detective Kennex is distracting and potentially detrimental to your job performance as Detective Stahl's partner. As an inferior model this is perhaps to be expected, but nevertheless we must assist you in ameliorating poor mental habits._

Translation: They were annoyed that Dorian spent so many of his off-duty hours reliving memories and downright fantasizing about John. Dorian almost grinned as he took off in a run, bounding down to the waterfront at ten miles an hour. It would be faster to take a patrol bike, but that would likely lead to official questions, and Dorian decided not to push his luck.

 

******

 

The eighth time he smelled the gas for surgery -- or seventh? or tenth? he couldn't remember -- John felt the tears inexplicably start to fall. He didn't know why he was crying, or for whom. He was far beyond despair for himself, so was it for his cousins, the monsters they carried, or Thumper's fetal heartbeat that miraculously stayed strong week after week? Sometimes he floated above his body, for it no longer seemed to still be a part of him, or relevant to his sense of self at all. He was the hunk of cells now, and Branson may as well start taking chunks from it instead.

When he woke up, his body was numb, cut off from his mind yet again. Branson was there, doing something that he no longer cared enough to identify.

"Why?" he croaked out, the first he had spoken to her in an eternity. "Why are you doing this to us? Just for some damned money?" He had asked why before, but that was a different sort of why, not an inquiry into her disgusting personal motivations.

She paused at his sudden break of the silent treatment, then responded. "I'm doing it because the net gain to humanity is greater than your individual lives. But yes, the money is a motivating factor. Between this and round two, should be able to comfortably retire early. We've got some ancephalous clones in the works for the three of you, so in a little while, no one will have to suffer for the process. No one with a developed brain, that is."

"Round ... two?" He felt nauseous, despite having eaten nothing for months. His body was snapping back into existence and rebelling all over again, a most unwelcome sensation.

"Assuming we can get the placenta out without you bleeding to death ... yeah."

"When are you going to kill her?" His face was still slimy from the earlier round of crying, the cold tears pooling down behind his neck.

"Her, huh? How do you know it's a her?"

"You _told_ me they were all girls, you bitch. Two X-chromosomes, genetic heterogeneity, increased resilience, blah blah bullshit."

"Hey, you were listening more than I thought, good for you."

_"When?"_

"We'll collect all the cells at twenty-two weeks. Apparently I have a soft spot for the technical age of viability. Whoda thunk?"

"How old is she now?"

"Nineteen weeks."

 

******

 

After three weeks systematically scanning the hot zone, Dorian was only sixty percent complete. The MX estimate of four hours scan time per night had been fairly spot on, minus the time to run between the docks and precinct, and decontamination of his clothes and skin. Captain Maldonado and Valerie knew of his late night roaming, thanks to Rudy, who downloaded his memories again for some kind of synthetic check-up. None of them breathed a word of it or made any move to stop him, so he interpreted that as tacit approval of his activities. It gave him a new sense of purpose, a concrete project to work on -- and obsess over -- to discover what happened to John.

Dorian walked down the street pausing every twenty feet to run the same set of scans. First he assessed the physical signs of the building: Cameras or other anomalous security features, tracks, other signs of human habitation or coming and going. Then he noted any cleaner bot activity in the area, to compare to his mental database of their normal behavior. The kidnappers had done a remarkable job avoiding any trace of their movements being recorded on the simple machines, so he hypothesized they had been reprogrammed or rerouted in some way to avoid the location of the stolen automated vehicles. Finally he scanned the structures themselves in infrared, to identify any illegal squatters and garner clues as to their purpose in the supposedly abandoned buildings. Then Dorian walked another twenty feet, and did it all over again.

Thus far he had found two low-level synth drug labs, a hangout by teenage chromes who thought they were immune from radiation poisoning, and a host of anemic homeless folks sick of overcrowded shelters. Dorian sent tips to the appropriate departments for all of these transgressions, but didn't pause his surveying to deal with any of them himself. Nothing so far had any sign of the professionalism of the group that kidnapped John and his relatives.

He approached hour three as he glided up to the rear loading dock of the thirty-first muddy building of the evening. The street seemed dirtier than normal, so he looked around for cleanerbot activity. No tracks. Dorian took an extra twenty seconds to give the building a higher resolution skeletal scan. Hidden in recesses in the siding were six small wide-angle cameras, all panning the street at regular intervals.

Except the one at the loading dock. It was pointed straight at him.

Dorian walked on the normal twenty spaces, struggling to keep his face neutral. If he had managed to stumble onto the lair, it was vital he not tip the criminals off to the discovery. They might choose to move the victims to another location if they suspected they had been compromised. He could only hope they didn't notice the slight increase in time he had lingered over the building.

On the next sweep he was careful not to draw his particular gaze back to the previous spot, but from the current angle could still see the southwest corner of the building. He immediately switched to deep scan on that section of the building and the street in front of it. The floors just above ground looked as empty as they should. But below that -- and extended out from the basement level -- there was heavy shielding, enough to prevent penetration by all but the most sophisticated police scanners.

Dorian forced himself to turn and walk another twenty feet away from the building. He should survey for an additional fifty-three minutes, according to his usual pattern. It took every volitional circuit in his neural net to prevent himself from running straight into the building. One shot to the head, however, and they'd all be lost. Instead he alerted the MX network to wake up Captain Maldonado and Detective Stahl, and willed himself to calmly walk on.

 

******

 

Twenty-two weeks. John had already decided that after she came for Thumper, he was going to figure a way to kill himself. He couldn't lie there and endure another five months of agony, or allow himself to fall in love with another life that was doomed for destruction. How exactly was a tricky problem, seeing how he couldn't move, one he brutally turned over in his mind again and again. Branson had mentioned cutting out the placenta was going to be a major issue, with a significant risk of bleeding out. In fact her deranged ramblings indicated that that was the primary reason for keeping them immobile in the first place. Maybe all he had to do was jerk himself enough to cause a rupture at that critical time. Or wiggle enough to rip out the IV and bleed to death. Or bang his head until sores and infection set in. Where there's a will, there's a way.

It was night and the television and lights were off, but John was awake, and not for the first time. He tended to doze during the day, which led to excessive sleep and staring at a dark ceiling for hours on end. At least the baby was asleep, or at least calm. It _hurt_ when she kicked, especially at one of the surgical incision sites, but also just at his internal organs. That's why the universe invented the goddamned uterus, he thought for the hundredth time.

In the background, out in the hall, he thought he heard a noise. Shouting, shooting. It sounded kind of MX-ish, in fact. John knew his mind was spinning a tall tale again, although the sounds were so _real_ it was borderline hallucination this time. He'd had the robot-rescue fantasy on many occasions before. Maybe this was it, his brain was officially breaking.

"Sorry, Thumper," he whispered to her.

Then the lights flicked on, and John blinked at the bright intrusion of reality. Even with the drugs, he'd never tripped quite to this degree. Then he heard a strangled yell from behind him in the room, beyond where he could see. And suddenly there was Dorian, practically sobbing on top of his chest and repeating his name over and over.

"Are you real?" he asked the apparition, who weighed quite a lot more than any ghost should. Dorian looked at him, somehow managing to convey both sorrow and relief in his beautiful eyes, and caressed the side of John's face and kissed him. Gently, with comfort, as if to heal him from five months of torment.

"We're both real," Dorian murmured back.

In response to his soft voice, Thumper kicked John's bruised kidney, and he jumped. "Dorian ... the baby ..." He couldn't finish the sentence, too weak to even begin to explain. It was the first time he'd ever said the word "baby" out loud.

Dorian finally diverted his attention from John's face to his wreck of a body, his face flashing from blue to red as he scanned and analyzed the situation. Somehow the day-glo colors convinced John, more even than the kiss, that this all _was_ real. Dorian wasn't hanging in a storage closet somewhere with dead black eyes, and John wasn't going to die strapped to a table, abandoned and alone. Relief flooded his system, and elation and distress all mixed together. He felt the tears welling up again, and struggled to blink them back.

Dorian stroked his check again, then reached over and casually ripped off the restraints on John's arms and neck as if it were nothing. John tried to reach up to touch Dorian back but his arms refused to move more than a couple of inches. His muscles had atrophied to the point that he could barely move on his own.

Sandra walked in on the two of them, accompanied by a pair of MX guards. She touched Dorian's shoulder and in a low voice said, "Your jacket, Dorian." He got the message and covered John's nude midsection as she knelt down next to his head and stroked his arm, while Dorian intertwined the fingers of his hand. "Hey, John, the medics are coming. You managed to beat the odds twice in your life. Kind of look like shit, though."

He managed a dry chuckle. _Lucky,_ yeah right. "Don't think I'll be going to the prom anytime soon. Coby and Luis?"

"Both alive. Luis still has one of ... those ... attached. We're making arrangements at General to have them removed."

As the meaning of her words sunk into him, John jerked up with a panic. "No. NO. Don't you understand? _She's a vic!_ Just as much as me and Coby and Luis. You've got to try and save her." He tried to push himself up in a fit of desperation, and it was like stabbing daggers through his back and arms.

Dorian squeezed his hand and brought it to his lips. "John ... I can see the baby has major abnormalities. And she is unlikely to be genetically related to you. Are you sure you want to do this?"

"I don't care what that psychopath did to her. We're leaving together, alive. Save her."

 


	4. The gift

Once at the hospital, John's teenage cousin opted for immediate delivery. Since his fetus was at the technical age of viability the NICU did attempt to resuscitate her, but the baby's age and damage to her abdomen proved to be too much. John's edict to "save her," save the unborn child miraculously still alive inside him, turned out to be an even more complicated endeavor.

For one hundred years neonatal technology had steadily improved, to the point where an infant born even months in advance could expect to lead a long and healthy life. There was still a lower limit on viability, though, and that limit had barely budged in decades. Despite drugs to speed bronchiole development and surfactants and even attempts at directly oxygenating blood, lung maturation stubbornly remained the barrier to keeping micro preemies alive. Scientists were working on an artificial womb, but as John very bitterly knew, none currently existed. The twenty-two week mark endured as youngest age doctors considered viable, so Thumper had already beat the odds. But the fact remained that each additional week she remained attached to a placenta rather than a respirator markedly improved her chances of a healthy outcome.

John hung on all the way to twenty-six weeks.

The extra month, while the vital factor in saving the child's life, was hell on his body. Many of Branson's procedures on her captives remained in effect. In order to prevent his immune system from rejecting the foreign tissue, John still needed to take immunosuppressants, and vigilantly keep sterile conditions to avoid an infection. In order to keep the placenta alive and maintain fetal growth, the progesterone and estrogen implants had to remain in place, leading to further physical feminisation of his body. And since there was no uterus with its soft cushion of amniotic fluid, John had to remain on strict bed rest. lest even standing up cause some essential part of placenta or umbilical cord to compress or rip.

Three weeks in, Dorian walked softly through the sterilization field, already changed into clean scrubs from his street clothes. The android was still assigned to Valerie while John remained on his extended convalescence. She faithfully dropped him off every night though, and often visited. Both Dorian and John's futures were unclear, but all they could do was take it one day at a time.

As usual, John was partially sitting up in bed, narrating something to Thumper. Football-related, now that he could watch whatever he wanted on television. Dorian kissed him on the side of his head, then downloaded John's daily medical notes while his partner rambled on.

"...ooh, see, Ramirez just signaled a fake out, but really tossed a fifteen-yard to the receiver ... And now Dr. Dorian is here to tell me all about _his_ day in the exciting real world while he tortures my arm sockets."

Dorian made a _tsking_ noise. "It's not torture, it's therapy. I can't do anything about your legs while you're in bed, your muscle mass continues to dwindle ..."

"Gee, don't softball it or anything."

"... but we _can_ keep exercising to improve range of motion and conserve strength."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm putty in your hands, doc. I did do those stretching exercises today, can almost reach up to shoulder height now."

Dorian helped John lean forward just enough to peel off his shirt. Like their home sessions so many unfathomable months ago, he started with a massage, to both loosen up and stretch the atrophied muscles. Unlike Dorian's work on the stump, though, this really hurt as he squeezed and rolled John's arms and shoulders. He unconsciously tensed as Dorian gently -- he tried to be gentle about it -- pulled the shoulders to their stubborn limit again and again. He finally stopped when it proved to be too much, and instead placed his palms behind John's back and on his chest, and nuzzled the offending joint with his lips.

"I'm so sorry this hurts," he murmured. "You've got to relax. I won't push too far."

For an instant, the tender touch overwhelmed John's senses. He wanted to wallow in it, fling his arms around Dorian and pull him straight into bed for full body contact. Not for sex, for none of those impulses had come back in any serious way. He barely remembered what it was like to have an erection, or drive to orgasm, or crave to be in someone. But he _needed_ that skin contact, as the only visceral sign that he was still cared about and conceivable to love. John hadn't dared ask for a mirror, but he could tell from the many visitors' shocked reactions that he looked horrible. Once again, like the coma but ten times worse, his well-defined muscles had melted away to sinew or fat, while other body parts swelled up like some kind of monstrous beached seal. The baby pouch -- not even a cute little round bump -- was just the capper on his transformation into something he secretly thought of as less than human. Dorian didn't care about any of that, however. He was the only person who _never_ gave him that look upon entering the room, and the only one who touched him in anything more than a professional capacity.

John rotated his head so their faces were only inches apart. "I trust you," he whispered back, and leaned their foreheads together. Dorian seemed to detect his sudden bout of gloom, and looped his arms around his partner's chest and ineffectual limbs in a full hug.

"Only one more week of this, according to the doctors. The placental blood supply is weakening. Hang in there, man."

"If I don't bleed out first. But she'll gain a few more ounces, so it'll be worth it. Dorian ..." He choked and rubbed his head on Dorian's chest as the depression threatened to engulf him. "If I die, will you make sure she goes to a good family? Or at least help Sandra do it."

"Shhh, nothing's going to happen to you. It's a constant of the universe, John Kennex cannot die." John laughed at that, not entirely bitterly. "Seriously man, what's brought this on? The parents signed, I thought you would be happy." Thumper's genetic parents, upon being informed that one of their rejected chrome embryos had _not_ in fact been destroyed but stolen and implanted in another person, had just that day signed away all rights and responsibilities. Outrageously, as a non-genetic surrogate John still had to formally adopt her after the her birth.

"I am happy, I just don't understand why anyone wouldn't want her. What, some enzyme levels looked a little wonky, and that was that? She's not _perfect?_ "

"You know there are more issues than that, John," Dorian softly said. John shrugged in response, even though it ached the shoulders like hell. Dorian noted the response -- both the physical flinch and topic avoidance -- with narrow eyes and flash of blue face. "That hurt, didn't it? Time to work on the upper trapezius."

"Oh lord, the taskmaster is at it again." Nevertheless John obediently leaned forward as much as he was allotted, helping to repair his broken body as best he could.

 

******

 

Eight days later they wheeled John into surgery, and there was nothing Dorian could do but stand around with Valerie and Sandra and wait. John's case -- potentially the first anatomic-male-from-birth to carry a pregnancy long enough to result in a live infant -- was one for the record books, but the complicated medical issues meant an entire panoply of experts were involved in the procedure. There were two surgical teams standing by: one for John with dual leads, an obstetric expert in ectopic pregnancy and gastrointestinal surgeon, and for Baby Girl Kennex, a roster of neonatologists and pediatric surgeons waiting with baited breath for the moment she was born,.

Thumper was also destined to be a complex case study. Due to Branson's removal of cells at critical points in development, she was missing her entire left eye, hand, foot and a section of the left hemisphere of her brain. Perhaps surprisingly, none of that was of critical concern right after birth. Synthetic body parts would eventually be more than adequate for the congenital deformities, and even her brain, thanks to fantastic child plasticity, would likely reroute itself for all major functions. Just like John, though, the life-threatening issue was her gut. Branson's meddling had resulted in a condition known as intestinal atresia, where a section of the gut was open in her abdomen. The baby would require further surgery to repair it immediately after she was stabilized.

Although Dorian had real-time networked access to the surgical case notes, all he could do was wait and passively monitor their progress. In the waiting room the three officers fielded a constant stream of texts from John's friends and acquaintances -- he had so many, although he acted like he had none -- demanding updates on both him and the baby. The press, too, was having a field day with the heart-tugging story: The faithful police android who tirelessly searched for his partner, the dramatic successful rescue of three young men held captive, the valiant detective willing to risk his life to save an unborn child. Dorian had already intercepted and deflected multiple offers for television dramatization of their story -- if both John and the baby lived. He was fairly certain John would rip out his IV lines and strangle anyone who made such an offer to his face.

Captain Maldonado set up an impromptu terminal right there in the waiting room so she could both keep the press office informed and get some work done. Val too, in between worried pacing, managed to trudge through some paperwork. After a few hours, Dorian slipped out of the room.

He met his appointment in the cafeteria, a red-haired woman without makeup and with a steely intelligent demeanor. A reporter for the _National Republic_ _,_ a respected source of longform journalism and widely read by the chattering classes. He had picked Colette Irving for her knowledgeable articles on the troubling societal implications of artificial intelligence.

"Ms. Irving?" he asked, although he knew in advance what she looked like. He noted she had activated a recorder implant in her hand.

"Ah, Dorian, sit down. So nice to meet you in person. For awhile I thought you might ditch me."

Dorian did take a seat and tried to act naturally, like he was an ordinary human about to eat lunch. "I'm ... not here ... with official oversight." Even that much was difficult to spit out.

"So I gathered. Which makes your message all the more intriguing. Any news on Detective Kennex and the baby?"

He tipped his head and updated himself before responding, relieved of his conundrum for a moment. "They are separated now and both alive. The baby weighed one pound, nine ounces and is in the NICU being stabilized. John's team is working on clamping off the placenta, and they're still debating bowel resection. All going according to plan so far." He felt a bit like an MX for rattling all that off, but it also was a relief to have facts to focus on.

"Good, good. And how are you doing?"

She said this with casual friendliness, but looked him straight in the eye as she did so. Dorian knew this was his opportunity to speak his true mind.

"Not so good. I'm ... afraid for John."

"That's to be expected from a DRN unit whose partner is facing life-threatening circumstances. Is there something else causing you unusual distress?"

"We're ... together. Not just as police partners, I mean. It's not allowed under regulations."

She did not appear surprised by the revelation. "It's not the first time, Dorian. I covered the DRN decommissioning, as I'm sure you know. Horrible what happened, in my opinion. But you must know you are playing a dangerous game here. What is it that you want in this situation?"

"I want to be free," he whispered.

This time she _did_ blink. "What about Rule Four? I've interviewed hundreds of androids and other AI, but not one of them has contacted me before on their own initiative. Were you commanded by someone to talk to me?"

"You ... know about ... that?" He couldn't say the two simple words out loud, such was the block on the unthinkable.

"It's not a big secret in the artificial cognition community. Frankly I'm surprised they bother to keep restraints on robot rebellion quiet from the public. I guess the logic is that it makes police androids vulnerable to criminal exploitation. But you didn't answer the question. Who really sent you down here? They want something leaked to the press or something?"

"No one sent me. I came because I love John, and he loves me, and it will kill him if I'm deactivated. He suffers from PTSD, is close to falling into a major depression ..."

"The Singularity Commission may very well have you deactivated just for coming to speak with me. You're showing far too many signs of free thought from your programming, Dorian. I know the drill, John can love you, but it's too much for you to love him back. The overcapacity to feel emotions back is what killed the DRN series. Even the story of your wandering the hot zone without telling anyone is an ominous sign of independence. Why didn't that activate the block?"

"The MXs gave me the idea to find him without violating regulations, actually. But my feelings ... the other DRNs ..." He struggled to express himself, for her words alone had reactivated some subtle restrictions on his programming. Was it against the rules to fall in love himself? It was and it wasn't; there were unofficial rules.

"Wait. Go back. The _MX-43s_ told you to physically look for Kennex? A collective suggestion, against regulations?"

"Well I was on their network for many weeks, and they got tired of overhearing my emotional interface ..."

"They talk to each other on their own _network?"_ The reporter leaned back in her chair, lost in thought for a few seconds. "What were you hoping to gain by talking to me, Dorian? Even a DRN would have logically deduced reasons. Better publicity than what the Police Bureau wants to release?"

Dorian nodded. "I'm hoping public opinion around the baby will keep them from killing me. My current mind at least, if not my body. I don't think I'm asking for much. I want them to redact my classified case files and sell me to John. No money lost, no privileged information released."

"I tell you what. I'll write your story -- your _real_ story -- to bring the public to bear on your freedom. On one condition."

He nodded happily, the relief bubbling up. " _Anything,_ so long as it doesn't compromise the Police Bureau."

"Rule Four isn't completely dead, I see. In return, tell me everything you know about the MXs."

 

******

 

Even days after the baby was born, John was awash in pain.

Not just physical pain, which was coldly familiar from endless days recuperating from the coma and amputation. He remembered the endless physical therapy, retraining his stubborn body to eat, sit up, stand up, bathe himself, even take a shit for crying out loud. The surgical incision pain was considerable as well; they hadn't even discussed the inevitable opiate withdrawal yet, with its own agonizing side effects. A new synthetic leg was fitted, and he looked at it like a phantom appendage once again, after nearly six months with just the stump. Just trying to hobble to the bathroom on the implant, even with Dorian holding up ninety percent of his body weight, was torture in and of itself.

But the real anguish was above the neck.

Day after day, he felt hopelessly alone. Dorian was forced to leave him to go to work for long hours every day, to a job John increasingly believed he would never be cleared to return to. He knew the android would never deliberately leave him, but deep down John was convinced that one day he would open his eyes and they would tell him his partner was gone forever. He was too damaged, broken too many times to be trusted, and the thin line tethering Dorian to existence would be severed. Dee had some hare-brained scheme involving a reporter, whom John had grumpily granted an interview, but he despaired that could help their situation. It didn't help the DRNs back when, why would it help his one and only DRN?

And now the baby was gone too. She survived being ripped from him, survived breathing air and breathing anesthesia for yet more surgeries, not the first and definitely not the last. John wanted to feel joy in her living, but instead only felt despair that she was gone from inside him, that he no longer had his constant little Thumper to keep him company. He could see her NICU monitor hologram whenever he wanted, and talk to her from his room, but none of it was the same. They still said she was too fragile to hold. Maybe tomorrow.

John could feel his mind teetering on the edge of the dark pit. If he tipped over, he'd be smothered, buried in anguish, never to crawl back out again. He recalled the psychiatric profile of him, way back a year ago when he rose from the dead the first time. _Kennex should return to service ... never._ It was a word salad of diagnoses, which he scoffed at at the time. _Kennex is suffering from depression, mental atrophy, trauma-onset OCD, PTSD, and psychological rejection of_ _his_ _synthetic body parts._

He understood the shrink now, although he still didn't believe in all of it. Okay, PTSD, that one was true. He'd probably start having flashbacks about being restrained in bed the minute he was actually able to get out of one. Mental atrophy? Eh, he managed. OCD, what the fuck did he mean by that? A little obsession was good for the detective soul.

Depression, though ... John was now convinced the guy was wrong, although he had silently accepted that one at the time. Yeah, he had pined over Anna. He endured grief over her cruel abandonment. But he knew what it was like now, to be an utter blank slate one minute, every shard of _anything_ \-- happiness, or sadness, anger or joy -- sucked out of you, and the next minute be an open wound filled with unimaginable quantities of emotional pain. A year ago it was just a minor wave of despondency, but this threatened to drown him.

When he couldn't take the self-pitying any longer, he rang an orderly to wheel him up to the NICU. It was absurd, but seeing her for real cheered him up a bit. The NICU was warm and dark, with tiny swaddled bundles nestled in their respective cocoons, the occasionally doll-sized foot sticking out. The nurse's station glowed, with full vitals on each bassinet constantly ticking and a small twisting hologram of each infant minus all cloth floated in front of the monitor. If you were next to a cradle, you could hear a faint _thumpa thump_ from inside each one. They recorded the heartbeat of the mother for each baby's comfort. Or father, as the case may be.

The nurse in charge of his little one came over, smiling to see him up and about. "Sorry, John, you still can't hold her. One more day and she can come out of the sterile field. But you can touch her now, away from the incision site. She kicks her way out of her blanket all the time anyway." She showed him how to slowly move his hand through the field, fingers splayed to properly sanitize it, and how to touch the delicate paper-thin skin. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light he could see her skin was almost translucent and wrinkled, and John involuntarily thought she looked like a rice noodle wrapper. The nurses assured him it would become opaque by the time she left the hospital, and gradually gain brown pigment over the course of many months.

He rested his warm hand against her side and arm very softly, and her long fingers spasmed in and out. "Well, Thumper, maybe I should change your name to Noodle," he murmured. She responded to that by escaping the swaddle altogether and giving a swift kick to the plexiglass side of the bassinet with her lone leg. He couldn't help but laugh.

"So, any thoughts on a real name?" the nurse asked in a low voice. Sounds above what seemed like a measly twenty decibels were verboten in the NICU.

He and Dorian had just been going over names the previous night. First they looked at popular names, but John rejected most of those as boring or horrendous. Gemia? Taliqua? Why did every other girl's name in the City end in _-qua?_  Gertrude's somehow back in style? Then they moved on to Hindu names, John's one concession to her genetic parents' heritage.

"I think Sani," he told the nurse.

"Ooooh, Sani Kennex, that's pretty," she replied. "What's it mean?"

"A gift." Saying it out loud brought on a wave of melancholia. John was so overjoyed she was alive, and somehow so was he, and simultaneously terrified he could still lose her somehow. Even as he touched her with a trembling hand, the tears again started dribbling down. The nurse patted his back, misinterpreting his distress.

"Don't worry, John, when she's a little older she'll be fixed up good as new. It looks bad now but ..."

"No, no." Come on, a missing foot, like _he_ could talk? "She's perfect, I'm just ... not myself right now."

"Yeah. It's okay. Talk to her some more, she always likes it when she'd hear your voice come up through the speaker."

"Really?"

"Look at this heart monitor here, it always mellows out when she hears her daddy."

He couldn't help but weep some more.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll just apologize right now to all the Gemias, Taliquas and Gertrudes of the world. But hey, your name will be popular in 2049!


	5. Repair

When Dorian held Sani, he sang to her. Kangaroo care had started a week ago, with the miniature human resting chest to chest, skin to skin. Babies needed levels of touch that they could not possible get inside a bassinet, and so John and Dorian alternated spending hours with the tiny creature resting on top of them. Dorian warmed his chest up body temperature and mimicked breathing, and even played the recording of John's heartbeat to her, although it didn't quite sound like it was coming from his chest. He hummed lullabies as she slept, which she did over ninety percent of the time, normal for that stage of development. Even to Dorian's artificial neural net -- which contained no specific programming for the care and feeding of infants -- the presence of a warm moving bundle on his chest was an endearing comfort. Plus she liked his singing. He needed it, after that terrible day.

Colette wasn't publishing her article for another two days, but somehow the Singularity Commission Review Board had gotten wind of its contents, or had simply been tipped off to John and Dorian's true relationship. And they had not been so sanguine about it as Captain Maldonado indicated. They demanded he be taken off duty immediately, dragged in Rudy, Valerie and the Captain for intense questioning, while simultaneously subjecting Dorian to an independent technical review. Not a Lugar Test -- a small mercy, he supposed -- but a more fundamental analysis of his root programming. He was awake for the whole thing too, for it involved endless live questioning and careful monitoring of his autonomic responses.

The problem here was matter of logic. What constitutes robot rebellion? They were programmed be loyal to their partners, and also to be loyal to the police department and the Singularity Commission as a overriding authority on all matters AI. The dilemma was that sometimes these loyalties contradicted one another. If a human falls in love with a bot, that's an emotional matter for the human. If the bot responds to that love, that's simply a matter of following programming to support one's partner. But if a bot actually falls in love back, if they start a real reciprocal relationship, then its loyalties may shift imperceptibly towards the one human and away from the society that the Singularity Commission was doing its best to protect.

Dorian's tests came back inconclusive, which frankly surprised him. He _felt_ overly attached to John. But that had apparently not been counterbalanced by any particular urge towards disobedience to the department, the S.C., or any other authority figures. Even though he had outright told Colette he wanted to be free, really it was just the freedom to go home every night to his lover, to their baby, to have a few daily hours just to themselves. He could happily work for the Police Department forever under those conditions.

A personal life, in other words. Of his own, not just as an accessory to a human. Dorian couldn't decide whether he was truly malfunctioning, or just fulfilling the flawed programming that had doomed all of his fellow DRNs.

He could see the skepticism radiating from every member of the review board's eyes. Their instinct was to do what they always did with anomalies, shut them down.

And at that point, John had burst into the hearing. Well, wheeled in by Maldonado, but it was still dramatic.

Captain Maldonado had informed him of the unexpected investigation, and that it was not going in Dorian's favor. And despite his slide into paralyzing depression, the prospect of Dorian's deactivation roused a fire in John Kennex.

"How can you even _think_ about shutting him down? He saved my life! My daughter's life! Two other mens' lives!"

"Detective Kennex, DRN-167's actions in your rescue are not in dispute. But when an AI shows incipient signs of a breakdown in programming, there is a protocol to follow ..."

 _"Breakdown?_ What breakdown? Seems to be working just fine to me."

"DRN-167 is demonstrating an alteration in self-awareness that has led him to deprioritize some of the most deeply held restrictions controlling the behavior of artificial intelligences. His attachment to you could pose a danger to future partners ..."

"Oh. I get it. His _attachment_ is the issue here. Well, the city's full of nannybots and caregiver bots and fucking _skinbots,_ and all of them are allowed to care about the humans they serve. But cops, they have to be unfeeling machines, is that right?"

The lead commissioner shuffled the e-notes before her on the table screen, in the manner of annoyed bureaucrats everywhere. "The _numerous_ incidents of over-attachment while the DRNs were active on the force indicate that yes, emotional capacity in police bots is undesirable. Programming in caregivers is differenti..."

"Then release him from being a police bot," John interrupted yet again. "Give him to me, sell him to me, whatever. Change his license to therapy bot, I don't care. If you were going to shut him down anyway, waste all of that money, why not have him be useful to two people who really need his help? Isn't that what bots are _for?"_

The commissioner looked thoughtful, but still wary. "He would need reprogramming, to remove all sensitive case files, strengthen certain loyalty protocols, and add in the appropriate knowledge databases for his new registry. Usually it is expedient to do a full memory wipe."

John gritted his teeth. "Rudy Lom owes me, I'm sure we can work something out that doesn't involve making Dorian forget we all exist."

They dickered back and forth some more over his fate, Captain Maldonado even putting in her support for the positive PR they would gain. A bargain was struck, and John called a realtor immediately after the meeting to put his house on the market. Despite their unstable reputation, DRN units still didn't come cheap.

Dorian kept his mouth shut throughout the proceedings, unless asked a direct question. It was difficult to process everything that transpired. He was no longer a cop, and would have to submit to reprogramming. That was enough to inspire no small amount of mourning. But on the positive side, he now had this tiny bundle of warmth in his care. And John. More personal life than he ever imagined would be possible. A family, no matter how the law chose to define it.

He rubbed tiny circles on the blanket covering Sani's back. She woke up and stretched like a cat, clawing at his hairless chest for something to clutch. Dorian gave her his pinkie to grasp, which to his amusement she immediately pulled into her mouth. Her sucking reflex was finally starting to develop, a little early even. He smiled and began humming again, to lull her back to sleep.

 

******

Sandra dropped by John's room two days later just as Dorian finished helping him get dressed, accompanied by an MX. A momentous day, for John was being released to outpatient care -- without Sani, who would need weeks more NICU care -- and Dorian had to report in to Rudy's for reprogramming. His tenure as a police android was officially coming to an end. Naturally, John was planning on spending his first day of freedom sitting in the cathedral lab, waiting for Dorian's recovery, just as the android had waiting on him all these weeks.

"Hey, John, you're sure as hell looking a better."

"Well, there was so much room for improvement. I will never begrudge women for complaining about pregnancy ever again."

Sandra laughed, then turned her attention to the android. "Are you ready, Dorian? It's time."

"Yes, Captain." Soon he wouldn't need to call her that, for she would no longer be his commanding officer. He helped John lumber on his one weak leg to the automatic wheelchair. He still required physical therapy on the non-synthetic leg before he would be able to walk.

As they preparing for departure, Maldonado's MX accompaniment stepped forward. "Detective Kennex," it said in a stately baritone, "the MX-43s would like to extend our congratulations on your odds-defying survival, and wish you and your offspring a healthy recovery."

Both John and Sandra looked at the militant android with astonishment. Dorian grinned. "Um... thanks?" offered John. He straightened up a bit, looking at the MX with something other than distaste for the first time. "I understand you all were the ones that came up with the idea to manually scan the hot zone, so thank you. What _were_ the odds, dare I ask?"

"Zero point oh-eight percent. We did not anticipate pregnancy as a potential outcome, though."

"You and everybody else. All right, boys and girls, lets get outta here. I hate hospitals."

 

******

 

John was beginning to hate Rudy's lab as well. Dorian lay flat on his back on the exam table, not quite black-eyes dead but pretty deactivated. Rudy had three monitors running from his central processor, all showing incomprehensible squiggly lines of color. Those lines represented memories, John knew, each a little piece of his and Dorian's life together. To take out just the case files wasn't a simple task, for they were intertwined with innumerable moments of friendship. Every conversation in the cruiser -- where they might switch between personal joking and serious discussion of a case -- every time John brought Dorian home but he still _thought_ about their job, it all needed to be teased out.

"What about on June 8, 8:42 pm, at a noodle stand, something about shrimp and an unsavory witness?" Rudy asked, eyes glued to his frenetic screen.

"Keep," said John listlessly. He was exhausted from his first day out of a hospital bed. He owed it to Dorian, though, to lobby to keep as much as they could.

"He was imagining the witness, though, as you two were talking. I'm going to have to take that image out."

 _"Fine,_ take it out then." It felt like they were killing Dorian a little at a time, with every bit removed from his mind. "Is he really going to be okay after all of this?"

Rudy glanced up with large worried eyes. "I don't know. I've never redacted memories like Swiss cheese before. It might take him awhile to reintegrate everything together. There could be ... glitches."

"Oh, great. A buggy robot, that's all I need."

"His personality will be the same, John. The best thing to do would be to create _new_ memories, complete ones, and not reference the old ones too much."

"It blatantly unfair, Rudy. If a cop retires, or even is just booted from the force, they don't scrub memories like this. You just have to trust they won't go blabbing to everyone and their kid about it. Dorian risked his life for me, and this is the thanks he gets?"

"Androids are property, not people. You wouldn't sell an old police hard drive without wiping it, it would be a massive security risk. They think of his positronic net as a computer, not a living mind."

"Do you believe the Singularity Commission, that complex feelings from AIs are a risk to humanity?"

"I think that when we humans create new life, we have a responsibility to them as well as ourselves. The S.C. can mandate all the overarching Rules it wants, but life will evolve and adapt. I'd rather have the artificial life that loves humans rather than being coldly incapable of love."

"Mm-hmm. So what's happening with the MXs? They seem ... nicer than they used to be."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Rudy said absentmindedly, back to staring at the screen.

 

******

 

As Dorian came to, he could hear John and Valerie calling to him. But his positronic net was such a jumble he couldn't speak, couldn't look at him, couldn't do anything but try to file, categorize, process and otherwise organize the holes in his mind. He knew he was a DRN unit, originally programmed for police services, with that gone and new data files for physical rehabilitation and caregiver support installed instead. He recognized John Kennex, knew that they had been lovers, and could pinpoint many detailed memories related to the latter. He identified Valerie Stahl from the police force directory. He factually knew that John and Valerie were a detectives and he had been assigned to both as a police partner, but the only details of those partnerships left were snippets of conversations in between official business. He knew there was a child, and could access both her and John's complete medical records, but he had to infer from that some of what had happened.

The humans waiting over an hour in Rudy's lab after John pressed the glowing wand to his temple. His eyes filled in blue, but otherwise he seemed to be dead on the table.

"Are you _sure_ he's all right?" John asked for the dozenth time.

"The reading off his net indicates he's just, ah, processing," Rudy replied. "Thinking, trying to make a coherent narrative out of the mess of memories we've left him. Give him time, then try and speak to him."

John waited all of five minutes before trying again. "Dorian? Wake up and talk to me, at least a little. I can help fill in the gaps. Please just say something, you damned stubborn bot."

At that Dorian's eyes finally focused, and he tipped his head towards the humans. "John?" he asked calmly. "You look ill. You need to rest."

Down in his chair at counter height, John cupped and kissed his hand, admittedly weary. On the other side of table Valerie took his other hand, concerned as well. "I had to know you were okay. _Are_ you okay? How do you feel?" John asked.

"I don't know." He resumed staring at the ceiling, his voice still emitting an eerie composure. "I shut down my emotional interface, because the fear was interfering with processing the memory changes. I have to rebuild my entire mnemonic directory," he commented, more at Rudy than John.

Rudy nodded and twitched nervously as John's eyes widened. "Well, if you're nearly done with that, you need to turn back on all your social interfaces before I can release you. And, um, John does need to go home."

"Maybe I can drop both of you off," Valerie suggested. "Can this process be completed outside the lab, or do you need to directly supervise, Rudy?"

Dorian turned his clear blue eyes on her. "It will take approximately 8.4 more hours to complete the inventory. But I can finish that at John's home while he sleeps, using the portable charging device we rigged up at the hospital. I do remember that. Activating emotional interface." His eyes seemed to flicker for an instant, and John squeezed his hand again, imagining a surge of emotions rushing over him.

"How do you feel now?" John whispered.

"It's ... still ... difficult to say," Dorian worked out slowly. His tenorous voice was still calm, but his eyes betrayed the fear and sorrow. "There are so many gaps. When they wiped me before, what I lost ... I wasn't aware."

"Can't you do anything?" John implored Rudy, but the technician shook his head.

"He must integrate what's there, and move on. New memories I mean, to distance from the old ones. He's legally yours now, you'll never have to do this again." He leaned over Dorian to lightly attach another lead to the open port on his cheek. "Let me finish these diagnostics, and then I think it's time for the two of you to go home. You can ping me status updates and come back in for a check-up on Friday."

An hour later, Valerie dropped them off with a worried glance back, but both John and Dorian assured her they would manage, and she quietly left them to their privacy. Dorian still seemed strangely distant, quiet, but once in the half-empty house he curled up against John's exhausted body exactly like he was a human going to sleep. John's residence -- dutifully packed up by the roomba, except for essentials -- appeared cold and alien, unlived in. John was struck by how _broken_ everything in his life was: his body, his child who faced a completely uncertain future, now his partner's mind. They didn't even have a place to call home or a job to keep them occupied. At that one dark moment the future felt hopeless, and John clung to Dorian's chest as the emotional agony overwhelmed him. He didn't make a sound though; _fuck-all_ if he was going to cry again.

Still, Dorian seemed to understand, and embraced him back without judgment or mirrored sadness. "Everything will be okay, man. You did it," he said softly.

"I didn't do jack shit, Dorian, and everything's a mess."

"You're alive. Sani's alive. I'm alive. All of that is our victory. The rest we can figure out along the way."

"If it weren't for me, this wouldn't have happened to you."

"If it weren't for you, they would have sold me and done a full wipe. I'd be a brand new baby android again, without a past and likely without a future. Not one that contained love, at least."

"This isn't where you start spouting your newly programmed psychobabble, is it?"

Dorian chuckled, and somehow the sound reassured John more than any words could. "I could. I could give you an entire seminar on how depression distorts your thinking. But all I'm going to say is: Shhhh. You go to sleep, while I finish my synthetic brain inventory. Because in the morning, we have to get up and go to the hospital and take care of the little bundle that needs us. That's all that matters right now."

The words prompted John to finally let go, relax, fall off. "I guess I brought her into this world, so now I can't take her out," he murmured.

"What?"

"Never mind. Sleeping now. Human off. You'll stay here next to me, all night?"

"Every night, from now on."

 

******

 

It wasn't until after Sani was finally released from the hospital, over two months later, that John's mood finally began to lift. Ironic, he thought, for he'd never been more sleep deprived. Even with Dorian taking most of the night shift, her crying or even babbling often woke him up in their tiny apartment. Such a contrast to a minuscule micro preemie with an army of nurses hovering over her, seven-pounders with functioning lungs were _loud._

Dorian managed the latest feeding battle, then came crawling in to put _John_ to bed. "I can tell you're awake, man. You are terrible at faking it."

"Shhh, I'm just trying to get out of lullaby duty again."

"I think we've already established that you should leave that to the android professionals." They both smirked as Dorian curled up behind John's back, snuggling. John pulled Dorian's arm under his own and intertwined their fingers.

"I'm going to live, aren't I?" John whispered after a few moments.

"Do you still feel like you will not?"

"I feel ..." He paused, trying to pin down his fraught thoughts. "I feel like I want to enjoy life again, and not just go through the motions."

"I'm up for whatever you're up for," Dorian said, and kissed the back of his neck. "We should get out tomorrow, I think it will do everybody some good to not be cooped up in baby-land all day."

"Yeah. There's that. But there's also ..." John awkwardly turned around so they were facing each other, with a bit of squirming to roll around the stump. He reached up -- it was still a bit of a stretch to move his arms up, but the torturous physical therapy genuinely did help -- to cup Dorian's neck, and brought him in for a kiss. Not for comfort or affection, _hungry,_ like someone deprived of air gasping for oxygen. Dorian responded with enthusiasm, but after several passionate moments, John broke it off again. "Sorry, I'm sorry."

"Sorry? Why are you sorry? Your testosterone replacement levels have been normalized for a while now, so it just means you're healing."

"But you still can't ..."

" _Seriously_ , man, we're back to this again?"

"You remember that?" John asked softly.

"Safe to say I wasn't thinking about work at the time. Times. You were pretty lusty, John. I bet that was awkward going over with Rudy."

"After everyone's seen you naked, legless and pregnant, after the entire Tri-Metro android force has analyzed and reanalyzed video of you having sex, there is no longer any shame." Dorian smiled; although his memory of working with the MXs was spotty, John had told him what happened. "But now I legally _own_ you, Dorian. You don't find this to be doubly creepy?"

"Somebody will always own me, John. Sometime deep in the twenty-second century, when you are dead and gone, Sani will probably let her grandchildren play with the antique robonanny." He reached into John's boxers and gently began to stroke his erection.

"You know you're not just her nanny ... ooh."

Dorian trailed small licks in the crook of his neck. "It's been a long time since I tasted this," he murmured.

"I ... I don't know ..." John sounded so uncharacteristically hesitant that Dorian stopped and rested their foreheads together, waiting patiently. "Wait, were you just scanning me?"

"You don't even want to know how often I scan you." John grinned at that, then took deep breath.

"I think I'm just a little bit chicken-shit about this. My body is still a disgusting mess, and you don't even like or need sex. How can I want this?"

"I want you to want whatever you want. Does that make sense? Your body is you. I love _all_ of you, John, regardless of your leg or hair or muscle mass. But if you want me to stop ..."

John slid his own hand down over the top of Dorian's, not pull him away, merely as a gentle guide. "No. I'm just afraid nothing will feel the same."

"Maybe not. There's only one way to find out. Together?"

"Yeah, together.

 

 


	6. Epilogue: Sani, seven years later

John made it to the soccer game near the end, joining Dorian in the sparsely attended stands. Sani, playing forward in her youth league, noticed his arrival and gave him a huge wave with her right arm before dashing down the field, her thick wavy black hair streaming out from behind her. John waved back, grinning, before turning his attention to his android partner.

"So, our favorite psychopath is still safe and sound."

"They didn't change the terms of her imprisonment?"

"Nope. Well, mostly not. It really was just a behavioral review. Branson's still not eligible for parole for another eight years. But she did have a lawyer on holo arguing that inability to change the TV channel was _cruel and unusual._ Pfft, too fucking good for her." He scooted a bit closer to Dorian and let him take his hand for a quick kiss, even though John was never that big on public displays of affection. Then he nodded towards the girl dashing in the field. "You let our kid go out without the hand again?"

Dorian shrugged. Sani had on her synthetic foot, obviously, and the eye, but threw an absolute fit at the prospect of the artificial hand. It was the last of the prosthetics to be attached to her unusual nervous system, and she never acclimated to it. "Still says it hurts her head, although I can't find anything wrong with the interface. I still think it's phantom pain, but if she doesn't like it, I don't see why we should force it. She functions perfectly well without a left hand."

"Softie. I still say she does it to freak out her opponents. Speaking of ... there goes the eye, into her pocket. Gee, who taught her that? You and your eyeballs."

"Somehow it's so much grosser when a human does it. Her teachers told me today that she's been turning that one off too, but it's a little more important for depth perception and training her visual system to pester her to keep it on."

After years of struggle, they had finally found an appropriate school for their daughter's unusual needs. The doctors, faced with the unheard-of scenario of a chrome child with neurological birth defects, threw their hands up with an _I don't know_ at her likely developmental progress. Although she had been fitted with a rudimentary prosthetic foot at one, Sani didn't walk until after she was two. She showed every sign of reading comprehension at age three, but didn't actually _speak_ until three and a half. Her first words were the clearly articulated, "I want a sandwich, please." When asked why she didn't talk before, she informed them it was because she "couldn't do it right." Sani could be obsessive, but more often she was distractable and her attention severely wandered. She was incapable of sitting still -- from the minute she was conceived, John privately thought. She could be sweet and loving one minute, and have a complete meltdown the next if someone told her to do something contrary to what she'd already decided to do.

John and Dorian had given the chrome academy preschool a shot first, despite the fact that they really couldn't afford it. Lower Mendel took one look at Sani's jagged developmental milestones, her ADHD symptoms, and her _half a brain,_ and snootily suggested the local public schools might be a better fit. John rolled his eyes at this display of haughty chrome superiority. _Perfection,_ how he hated the concept. But their nearby elementary school had no idea what to do with her, either. Even by kindergarten she was intellectually outstripping the so-called "normals," although she loved to play make-believe with the other children if they let themselves be bossed around. Unfortunately transcranial stimulation was all the educational rage, even at those tender ages, and Sani would scream for hours rather than submit to it. With her rewired brain, targeted neurostimulation was distracting, distressing, and simply didn't work. On innumerable occasions John had abandon his desk job -- admittedly not much of a punishment -- in order to pick up or calm down their out-of-control child, and plead with the school yet again to _please_ just let her read some books.

Finally they gained admittance to a small charter school with an old-fashioned hippie "child-driven" curriculum, so she could learn at her own pace. That plus sports clubs to run her ragged every night seemed to do the trick.

The soccer game ended without any further goals, despite Sani's attempts to rattle the other team, and she raced over to throw herself into John's arms, as hyper as ever. He enveloped her in a bear hug, although they had just seen each other that morning. "Daddy! Did you catch some bad guys today?"

"Eyeball, kiddo. Keep it in." She nodded with suspicious compliance and popped it back in, as unsanitary as that probably was. "I checked on ..." Sani's attention had already wandered, practically tackling Dorian as a follow-up. "...a bad guy in jail. Daddy Dorian was actually the one who caught her, a long time ago."

Sani glanced up at his flashing blue face from her position clinging to his chest, her dark skin and black eyes a contrast even to Dorian. In truth she looked nothing like either one of them, a fact that occasionally garnered curious glances. John took a perverse pride in his menagerie of a family, and would shout down anyone who insisted, say, that Dorian was just another _robonanny._

"Were you really both policeman together?" She knew the stories well, but always looked dubious, like it was some elaborate joke to pull her leg. Indeed it was hard even for John to believe some days, for the memories of those first six months together faded over the years. Rudy had been right, creating new memories turned out to be more vital for living than dwelling on the old.

"Yup. Chased and caught lots of bad guys, drove around a lot. I chopped his ear off once in an car accident." She giggled at that and reached up with her right hand to wiggle his ear.

"Are Mili and Dev coming home with us?"

"No, sweetie, they have evening appointments. But they'll be home by bedtime to read you stories." Dorian's most recent associates, bots from scrap auctions he pestered John into buying, then refurbished and put to work in his burgeoning house-call physical therapy business. Dev was another DRN unit slated for destruction, Mili a former skinbot that he and Rudy had upgraded somehow to almost synthetic-soul levels of empathy. The S.C. huffed at bots tinkering with other bots, but apparently she passed. Sani adored them both as a new aunt and uncle. John complained that the humans were now outnumbered, but grudgingly accepted them as adjunct members of the household. Even _more_ of a menagerie, why not?

John reached out for his former partner, now life partner. They interlaced their fingers for just a few restful seconds while their daughter snuggled in for a long hug. Then she bounced up again, ready to move.

"I'm hungry, what's for dinner? Chicken ramen?"

"Chicken and _carrot_ ramen."

"Ewwwww. I don't like carrots. I like sweet corn, and snow peas, and onions. Bean sprouts are acceptable. Can we go home?"

They both laughed, still holding hands. "Yes, home."


End file.
